With a widespread use of high-speed communication technology and a high-speed communication network, information technology (IT) systems that provide a variety of IT services to clients by linking, for example, a Web server, an application server, a database server, and a storage to one another have been in widespread use. In such IT systems, in order to detect a failure early and manage applications executed by the servers, a data collection apparatus is used. The data collection apparatus collects configuration information regarding the servers, software, and process applications from each of the servers. In addition, a data analyzing apparatus that analyzes the configuration information collected by the data collection apparatus is used.
The IT system including the data collection apparatus is described in more detail below. For example, as shown in FIG. 24, the IT system includes a server group to be monitored, a data collection apparatus, a data management apparatus, a data analyzing apparatus, and a management console. The server group to be monitored includes server apparatuses that provide IT services to clients. As noted earlier, examples of the server apparatuses include a Web server, an application server, a database server, and a storage.
The data collection apparatus collects configuration information from each of the servers to be monitored and transmits the collected configuration information to the data management apparatus. For example, the data collection apparatus compares the collected configuration information data with the previously collected configuration information data. If a difference is found, the data collection apparatus transmits the different configuration information data to the data management apparatus.
The data management apparatus includes a configuration management database. The data management apparatus can store configuration information data received from the data collection apparatus in an integrated fashion. That is, the data management apparatus can associate the configuration information data with one another and use the information for management. Upon receiving a configuration information data from the data collection apparatus, the data management apparatus sends, to the data analyzing apparatus, a difference notification message indicating that a configuration information data that differs from the previously stored information data is newly stored.
Upon receiving the difference notification message, the data analyzing apparatus acquires the updated configuration information data from the data management apparatus. Thereafter, the data analyzing apparatus performs data analysis using the acquired configuration information data and outputs a result of the analysis (e.g., information regarding applications and processes executed by the servers and failure information) to the management console. The management console displays the result of the analysis output from the data analyzing apparatus (refer to, for example, Japanese Laid-open patent Publication No. 5-95357).